Is this Conceptual Art?

The Northern Illawarra Art Trail was held on the weekend of 19 and 20 November. A few days before, while walking through the bush, I came across this bucket of wet plaster dumped in between some of the nests in the Stanwell Avenue Reserve. It looked like a case of malicious dumping by a rogue plasterer. However, another possibility is that it is an exquisite example of “conceptual art” entitled Plaster with Bucket by an anonymous Phantom Plaster Dumper (“PPD”).

“Conceptual art” has flourished since 1917 when Marcel Duchamp submitted a urinal entitled Fountain to an exhibition. The curators accepted that anything taken out of context can be art, and you would not expect a urinal to be exhibited on a wall in an art gallery, just like you would not expect a bucket of left-over plaster at Art in the Park.

In 1993 New York’s Museum of Modern Art exhibited Gabriel Orozco’s shoebox on a floor to be kicked around by patrons. In 2013, Argentinian artist Enrique Jezik won the Premio ArteBA prize for his package, accidentally sent to the gallery without his painting in it. In 2019, the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan sold a banana taped to a gallery wall for $120,000. In 2021, Italian artist Salvatore Garau sold a vacuum, that is, nothing, for €15,000.

Art critic Alfredo Herrera de Haro has praised the PPD work, saying: “The line is almost perfectly straight, but not quite. It reminds us that nothing is straight or perfect in the universe.”

Art critic Roman Dabrowski has described Plaster with Bucket as “a striking masterpiece that has already cemented its place in modern art”.

I thought it had a profound meaning, since the plaster was obviously scattered when it was soft. Its message is that soft things always go hard. Just give them time.

Professor Robin Knox from Tasmania thinks the meaning is clear: “Unless you are soft, you need to get plastered straight away before you kick the bucket. It’s not hard.”

Art critic Erick J. Mitsak thinks “a community effort should be undertaken to unmask the PPD to give them the accolades they so richly deserve”. He suspects the artist will come out of the closet, because celebrity is at the centre of conceptual art and “limelight gets them every time”.

The final decision on Plaster with Bucket’s future will be made by Council, which manages the land on behalf of the Crown, His Majesty, King Charles III. It is possible the Council’s art curators will decide the PPD’s work will be replaced by a copy of Salvatore Garau’s masterpiece, namely, nothing.